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On the contrary, I think Google cares about links even more. They just added more weight to the quality of the sources and the link juice they pass. Be very diligent when choosing who to get your backlinks from. Do your research with all the outstanding tools here on SEOMOZ and be consistent about building your link profile and you'll do wonderful and have fun as well.

The Panda Update is evidence of this. Google has to care because it affects their bottom line. Other things to watch out for are Social graph metrics influencing SERPS.

Blog comments look like spam if your keyword is in the name field and I'm sure google will crack down on this. Emailing webmasters will cost a hell of a lot if you want a lot of links. Directorys are low quality and irelevant! Where does this leave us in terms of getting links?

There was the JC Penney incident a few weeks back that made for a major shift in how Google devalues some links. All Matt Cutts would say is that they had already been working on it and the JCP thing just brought it up sooner rather than later.

Is this a new trend in SEO? Nope. Google still likes quality links and still tries their hardest to remove low quality ones that artificially drive up results.

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